Voya Restaurant & Lounge

Located at the incredible Loden Hotel at 1177 Melville in Vancouver, Voya Restaurant & Lounge offers culinary creations from Executive Chef Marc-André Choquette. Choquette has served as Executive Chef at Vancouver’s Lumiere and worked at New York’s famous Gramercy Tavern. My wife and I spent the night at the Loden over the weekend as we were both participating in a wedding at the Vancouver Rowing Club in beautiful Stanley Park. The guys all had lunch at Voya before getting into our snazzy tuxedos and heading for the limo for the quick trip to the venue. I had the watercress salad with shaved Granda Padano and citrus vinaigrette. Perfect amount of dressing and just light enough to avoid feeling full before all of the activities of the rest of the day. I also enjoyed a couple of bottles of Innis & Gunn oak barrel aged beers from Scotland, they were fantastic and have earned a lifelong fan.

The wedding was amazing, held on the deck at the VRC with Vancouver’s amazing skyline in the background. The weather forecast looked grim calling for lots of rain but miraculously the sun was shining for the entire ceremony and all of the pictures. Once we moved inside for the reception the heavens opened and it poured rain all night.

In the morning my wife and I headed down to Voya for breakfast before checking out and heading for home. We both had 2 free range eggs, over medium for me and scrambled for Lyndsey, that came with roasted potatoes, bacon, toast and a little fruit bowl. My eggs were perfect but Lyndsey’s were a little runny, the bacon was really good with not too much salt and just the right thickness. The potatoes were slightly over seasoned for both of us, too much rosemary, but were cooked well and not dry which is sometime a problem with roasted potatoes. The fruit bowl was a welcome change from the usual fruit salad from a jar that comes with most breakfasts. It had strawberries, kiwi and blueberries plus the usual melon and pineapple. It’s not that often that I get to eat breakfast at a restaurant of this quality and it was a nice change from coffee shops and cheap cafe’s.

You can check out the Loden Hotel and Voya at the links at the bottom of this post and they are both on twitter as well! The Loden left me a nice little note and some tasty treats in my room as we follow each other on Twitter. Never underestimate social media, you never know when free chocolate will come your way!!! Back to the grind tomorrow…